"Funky Brewster" by Sarah Goldsmith
Jordana Brewster, 18, hates when people misjudge others. And she has a unique expression for when people do this. If someone tries to cast aspirations on her, she says, “Don’t put those shoes on me.” The half-Brazilian, half-American actress doesn’t mean the ones you walk in. To her, shoes are character traits—“Certain words people use to describe you, I call those things shoes,” Brewster explains. “My mom or dad will say something like, ‘You’re being lazy.’ Or someone will call me a princess.” That someone was Shawn Hatosy, one of her costars in this Christmas’ The Faculty. His remark initially hurt but mostly surprised her. “I guess my sense of humor debunks that [image], or once people know me…” she says, her voice trailing off. Then she adds, “I’ve heard the word aloof a lot.”
If the ultrapersonable Brewster seens a little too sensitive, maybe it’s because she has wasted enough time trying to please people. “In sixth grade—after my family moved to New York from Rio de Janeiro—I changed myself to fit in,” says Brewster. “Cliques are all about teasing you about things that are not necessarily that odd. For instance, my mother would cook me pasta for lunch, but all the other kids had sandwiches and Cokes, and the were like, ‘God, you’re so weird.’”
Well, they’re all probably biting their tongues now. Brewster, a dead ringer for Demi Moore, has a career that keeps getting hotter, even though she still hasn’t logged much mileage as a performer. With one soap, one TV movie and one feature film under her belt, her list of credits would seem to fall short of that of her various costars—Elijah Wood, Jon Stewart, Salma Hayek—but the three years she clocked as Nikki Munson on As the World Turns earned Brewster the professional chops to impress The Faculty’s director, Robert Rodriguez. “She is such an accomplished actress that from her first audition to her final shoot in the film, I completely forgot that this was her first motion picture,” he says.
In The Faculty, Brewster plays Delilah, the head cheerleader at a high school where the teachers just happen to be aliens. Although Brewster is not allowed to talk about the film’s hush-hush storyline, she did describe the nightmare character she portrays. “Delilah victimizes people,” she says. “She feeds off of making people feel insecure so that she can feel superior to them. And she gets away with it.” In a bit of pioneering cross-promotion, Brewster and some of her fellow cast members—such as Josh Hartnett, Usher, Laura Harris and Clea DuVall—were clothed by designer Tommy Hilfiger and even modeled the fashions in an extensive print and television ad campaign.
With The Faculty behind her, Brewster feels free enough to dish about her costars. She leans forward to impart some juicy gossip, but places her paper napkin over the tape recorder—her way of saying this is off the record. What did she reveal? Let’s just say, she didn’t come home with 10 new best friends, but she is quick to reiterate how much she adores acting. “I love working,” she says emphatically. So much so, that just days before she was supposed to start her freshman year at Yale University (she had already done all her clothes shopping), Brewster decided to put college off for a year to costar in the made-for-TV miniseries the ‘60s, which will air on NBC on February 7 and 8. Executive producer Lynda Obst put the tough decision in perpective for Brewster. “Lynda said, ‘You’ll either be watching this from your dorm room or you’ll be in it,’” Brewster recalls. She also asked her father, Alden, an investment banker, for advice about taking the part. “He fell in love with the script,” she says, but her m
other, Maria Joao Brewster, a former Sports Ilustrated cover model (in 1978), wasn’t convinced. “My mom would rather know that I’m an hour and a half away on a campus—[not] out in Los Angeles all alone.”
The ‘60s follows six characters through the decade’s milestones, like the civil rights and antiwar movements. Brewster plays Sarah Weinstock, who, she says, goes “from Barnard College student to hippie chick.” In real life, Brewster, who is camped out in a hotel room while shooting, is learning about being solo in L.A. afer having spent her nights in swanky New York City nightspots . “I just bought a kitten, put it that way,” she says giggling. When she has a rare night out, she’s not exactly meeting Mr. Right. “I’ve never gone out with anyone for onger than three weeks,” she says with a half smile. “You know when someone likes you too much. If you’re not in the [right] state of mind or mature enough to deal with it, it just doesn’t work. I mean that’s my experience,” she says.
While Brewster and her cat, Delilah (named after her Faculty character), are getting used to hotel life, she spends her time delving into the sixties—through music. “Listening to Dylan has really helped me the most, because I think you have to look at the emotional side of [the 1960s] and understand what people were feeling,” she explains. She got the lingo down right away—having had to utter the revolutionary cry “Up against the wall motherf***er” during her audition. “Lynda told me that everyone who tried out for the role stumbled over that line,” says Brewster.
Clearly, it takes more than a four-letter word to make Jordana Brewster stumble.
